


circle the drain.

by Aya_A_Anderson



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Coming of Age, F/F, Genderbending, Homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-25 08:45:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2615567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aya_A_Anderson/pseuds/Aya_A_Anderson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shoyou Hinata is normal, and Shoyou Hinata likes the shy boy who sits at the front of her class, and volleyball is only one of the many things she doesn’t ever want to do again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Honest to god, Hinata, your whole volleyball team’s hot.

“Um.”

Her mother looks across at her, absentmindedly stirring soup around and around in a pot. “What is it, Shoyou?”

“I think I’m gay.”

And the world falls away and she’s stranded on a pinhead as the air falls and they and the kitchen are sucked out and strained and replaced with a carbon copy, soulless and wavering a little, like Shoyou’s stomach is wavering, and she knows within three seconds this is the stupidest decision she’s ever made, thing she’s ever said.

Her mother’s lips are frozen, wooden, and she says, “What?”

Shoyou is silent. She watches her mother’s hands, trembling on the rim of the pot. Boiling water spits but it might as well be ice for all either of them know or care to know. Her mother’s bright face is terse, plain and pale with fear.

“Tell me this is a joke.”

She stays silent and still, and feels the old sickness shiver up her skin from feet to shaking hands, shaking her head, slightly, back and forth, not enough for the motion to be taken as any statement either way. She’s never felt anything like it, before. She’s never, never pictured, never imagined, well, imagined but never as bad, imagined scenarios but not the creeping shock, sparking like poison in her chest and gut and her soul, into the deepest parts of her.

Her mother’s face is slack, immutable.

“It’s a joke... I. I’m not. Gay. I just.”

Her mother’s shoulders slump. The earth turns.

“I’m… I… I don’t fit in. At school. I don’t really… I mean, the other girls. They’re not. Like, I mean, I like sport, and they’re not really interested, and I thought it’d be better if I could just fit in somewhere, I mean!”

“Shoyou,” says her mother, very gently. Her hands, when they come to rest on her daughter’s shoulders – bare under her bright green tank top – are clammy. “Shoyou, liking sport is okay. It’s fine not to fit in: not to want to wear make-up or talk about boys. That doesn’t make you gay.”

She stutters the word. That last one.

“I know,” says Shoyou. “It’s just…”

“You’ll grow into all that,” says her mother, “I promise. You’re not strange, or different. You’re a normal fourteen year old girl. I wasn’t interested in boys until I turned sixteen – that doesn’t make you gay. And it’s not good to fit in with that crowd, anyway. They don’t have it as easy as you might think they do.”

Shoyou is falling, falling, falling like rain.

..

“Want me to toss to you?”

Shoyou looks at Izumi, whose hair is caught in a cute bobbled ponytail, who stares at Shoyou these days as if she’s sick, and Shoyou’s looking forward to high school just so she can leave behind the awkward glances during class, the whispering of her friends.

“Thanks, Izumi! But I’m okay, for now.”

Izumi looks a bit put out. “You never want me to toss to you anymore. What happened to the Small Giant?”

“I thought that sort of thing annoyed you,” Shoyou giggles, her insides slowly ripping themselves to shreds.

“Not anymore,” says Izumi. “What happened? After that game?”

“They were really good,” says Shoyou, dragging out the _really_. She’d heard other girls in her class doing that, elongating their words, especially around the boys. Everything was about boys, nowadays. “I don’t think I could ever be that good, even if you tossed to me every day!”

Izumi stands, quite abruptly, brushing dirt off the back of her skirt. “Yeah, okay.”

“What’s wrong? Are you alright?”

“Fine, Hinata.” Izumi flashes her a wide smile, her eyes slipping shut for the barest of moments. “See you later, or something.”

Shoyou sits on the lawn for a while after she goes. Izumi has left behind a volleyball, the one they normally use to practice with. Shoyou picks it up, turns it over a few times in her hands, familiar callouses falling into the gaps between grooves.

..

When Shoyou lies in bed, she drains all her stress into the mattress and out into the air.

What if I was, she thinks. What if I was straight? What if I am straight?

The summer air buzzes with storm static and mayflies and what if turns into I am like how the seasons change, as easy as the earth continues to turn, easy as Shoyou’s old friends fall backwards into the past.

..

Friends are easy to make. Really, really easy. Shoyou grins and falls back into the brilliance of new school and new teachers and new classmates and a whole new ballpark now she’s in high school. She meets friends on the way through the orientation day stalls, winding her way past club and society booths, looking a little lost, a little curious, and gets talking to a few girls her age about their middle schools and their hopes for Karasuno.

They have a volleyball club, too, which her parents had told her to join, it would be good for her to meet some ‘older girls,’ socialise with the boys on the corollary team. She briefly glances at it, the stall – makes eye contact with an ‘older girl’ with cropped silvery hair and soft amber eyes, holding a stack of fliers, and the girl smiles at Shoyou and Shoyou sort of. Flushes.

Shoyou swallows hard, and turns back to her new friends, passing the blush off as a laugh.

Mari and Rin, of the initial group, are both in her class. Both of them have very long hair, Mari’s bleached blonde, tied back with two school ribbons. Shoyou’s own hair is shoulder length and vibrant, uncontrollably choppy with curls, and she rubs lightly at her short ponytail and wonders if she should let it grow out too.

..

Shoyou cycles home every day, and uses the bicycle rack as her excuse. She takes a detour past the vending machines on certain afternoons and stands outside the court for a while, watching volleyball.

..

Shoyou’s popular – quickly popular, within a matter of weeks, giving warm smiles to everyone she sees and receiving them all back – but her friends are nice, and they don’t talk too much about boys. They discuss books and films and games and clothes and hairstyles, and they’ve all been around to Shoyou’s house and met her mother, and both of Shoyou’s parents smile at her a lot these days and commend her on what lovely friends she’s made. Shoyou’s not tracking too well in class, but no worse than she’s ever formerly done.

Shoyou’s popular – so popular, even the boys like her, as a friend, and they joke around and freak out over the odd sports match together, when Shoyou gives in to the urge to watch them. Shoyou is very friendly, and she makes friends with a boy named Yachi, who sits up the front in the class next door to hers (Shoyou had accidently walked in there once and sat down beside him, striking up a conversation, only to realise when his teacher wandered in and began to laugh). Yachi likes books, likes fantasy and mystery, and is as easily excited as he is scared. Shoyou begins to think she likes him. She sort of tries to like him more, wonders if the warmth she feels when she sees him might be the sort of love the girls in her class go on about, that soul-mate kind of love.

..

Shoyou watches the girls play. They’re all reasonably tall, and the silver-haired one is there, too, fluidly setting balls. Her palms itch.

It’s enough, enough.

..

Shoyou’s popular – quickly popular, within a matter of weeks, giving warm smiles to everyone she sees and receiving almost all of them back. There’s one girl who never smiles at her. Shoyou sees her first on orientation day; how could she not? The Queen of the Court, who’d sneered at her and smashed all her pride and left the court to the jeers of her teammates. Kageyama Tobio is very tall, and she’s on the Karasuno volleyball team, and the other girls call her weird and stand-offish for the same qualities cool boys possess. Kageyama never smiles at Shoyou.

Shoyou thinks Kageyama’s a complete bitch, but so, so talented, and really pretty, with long, glossy hair and deep blue eyes, a colour she’s never seen before. Shoyou thinks about her a bit, during class, or while she’s trying hard to fall asleep, and that scowl on her face, and wonders what she’d look like caught off-guard.

..

She’s seen Kageyama play before, but not under this new team. The Karasuno Seniors are tight-knit, and Shoyou knows their court positions, if not their names. The girl with bulky thighs and stocky shoulders is the Captain. The silvery-haired girl is her Vice. The ace is Azumane Asahi, who almost everyone knows by reputation. Their hyperactively skilled libero is Nishinoya Yuu.

Shoyou blushes a bit over Nishinoya Yuu-chan. A second year, small and petite, who wears her skirt short and her socks long and spends all her time around guys and her teammate, Tanaka… Ryunosuke? Yuu grins as readily as Shoyou and religiously dyes a tuft of her spiky hair; she must use gel in it. Shoyou wonders if Yuu’s hair would feel oily, if she ran her fingers through it.

..

People say Asahi’s a lesbian. They say it in a strange half-whisper, like they’re not quite sure of all the details, or whether they’re even pronouncing the word correctly.

..

There’s a party at Aya-chan from Class 2C’s house. Her parents both work in Tokyo, live together in an apartment there, and Aya-chan lives alone with a monthly allowance. Aya-chan is as popular as Shoyou, but less nice about it, popular for her string of boyfriends and her giggling and the modest house parties she’d put on every month or two – she seems to have taken a liking to Shoyou, ruffling her hair and calling her a little duck, then laughing as if Shoyou’s meant to laugh with her.

Shoyou’s never tasted alcohol before. One drink of something, something that tastes vile and sears the insides of her mouth and throat, and she starts to curl in on herself and all the good in the room is suddenly gone and her friends get bored of her and leave to talk to their other friends and Shoyou winds up on a couch in a corner of the living room next to two girls she only recognises because one’s never seen without the other.

Tsukishima Kei looks at her, lips tensed in a sneer, and says, “Pathetic.”

They’re not popular, Tsukishima and Yamaguchi – more so estranged of their own making, in their disdain for fashion and boys and gossiping and all of the accumulated worst parts of girls and Shoyou gazes blearily up at her, fingers clenching on Yamaguchi Tadashi’s shirt.

“She’s just an attention seeker, Tadashi. Like all the rest of them.”

Yamaguchi smiles apologetically and unravels Shoyou’s fingers.

They leave and Shoyou hears Yamaguchi say, “Why do they all look so sad, Tsukki?”

Fake, fake, fake, drummed through her pounding head.

..

“Yeah,” says Rin-chan, softly. “Aya-chan says Azumane’s even dating a girl here, but no one really knows who.”

“Wow, really?” says Shoyou, and she widens her eyes in parody of shock. The nerves in her lips twitch uncontrollably.

“Yeah. Isn’t that weird? I think she, like, plays volleyball, too. Imagine changing in a locker room with her. She’d be watching you!”

Shoyou knows she plays volleyball. Asahi is kind and slightly cowardly, carrying herself small despite the breadth of her shoulders and feminine hourglass of her hips and largeness of her breasts. She looks womanly, older, in a way Shoyou used to admire whilst looking in the mirror at her own slight physique, tracing the very slight curve to her own waist and wanting to grow taller. Asahi is very gentle with the ball and her teammates, and seems to be loved by everyone who knows her well.

Most people don’t like getting to know things well. Most people like talking. Most people will say anything.

“Mm,” she says, “That’d be weird.”

Shoyou looks at herself in the mirror and hates herself, hates herself, hates herself. She thinks about Nishinoya Yuu and feels weird. She wants to be a boy so she can play volleyball again.

..

Stuttering, Yachi asks her to go and see a movie with him.

Shoyou smiles blindingly, genuinely, and says yes, and they spend all of Saturday holding hands and curling up in each other in fright as zombie after zombie is decapitated on-screen.

He kisses her gently as they walk home together. It’s very chaste and light and glossy, and Shoyou smiles against his lips. She likes him, she likes him.

They stop off at the foothill store to buy candy. The cashier eyes her, looking her up and down, scrutinising her face. “Hey. I know you, don’t I?”

“No, I don’t think so!” Shoyou twitters, clutching at Yachi’s slightly clammy hand. “I kind of want the grape lollipop, what do you think?”

“I know you,” says the man, decisively, rising a little in his seat. “You watch the girls’ volleyball practices. Look in at the window.”

Shoyou pales, and fidgets. She looks at the ground, at Yachi, who’s smiling uncertainly. Then she says, “I do, sometimes. They’re really good. Just these, thanks.” She puts her handful of lollipops and Yachi’s gummy worms on the counter and fishes in her pocket for coins.

“No,” says Yachi, “it’s okay, I’ll get them.”

Let the boy pay for you, on the first date, said her mother.

“You should come in, sometime. Have you played before?”

Shoyou steps back a little, lets Yachi pay. She’s never felt so miserable. “A little. Not really. I’m pretty bad.”

The cashier looks unconvinced. “Yeah, okay. Next time you come by the gym, you’re coming in. You’re starting to creep out Azumane-chan.”

Shoyou flushes bright, bright red, snatches her candy off the counter, and hauls Yachi from the shop and up the main street. She apologises, breathless, and Yachi says it’s all okay, again, but why doesn’t she try out for the volleyball team, if she likes it enough to watch it after school?

She looks helplessly at the sky, the clouds littering rain in the far mountains. She wants to drown. His hand feels wet and gross in hers, and she hates it, hates it. Her lip gloss feels wet and stale on her lips, dragging them down, mascara clumping her eyelashes. He’s looking at her, all concerned, too much like Izumi, and she sits down on the roadside and begins to cry.

“Hinata-chan? What’s wrong? Did I do something? If you didn’t like today, that’s… that’s okay! We’ll keep fighting on as friends, right?”

“No, no,” Shoyou sobs. Her makeup is tracking her cheeks. “No, it’s not you, never. You, everyone else, you’re all fine.”

“Is it volleyball? I didn’t know you liked it that much.”

“I don’t,” she sniffs, “not really.”

“Yes, you do. What’s so wrong with volleyball? Did your parents say it was too boyish, or something?”

“No,” Shoyou sniffs, wiping her eyes. She laughs. “I’m all melting. See, Yachi? I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

Yachi thinks for a minute. He’s always been a little sensitive, for a guy. Gets teased by his classmates. No one ever mentions the word ‘gay.’ That’s too far out of bounds. “When he mentioned Asahi. Are you scared of her, or something?”

Shoyou laughs, laughs and laughs, like she hasn’t laughed enough in the last few weeks – who knew high school would be so fucking terrible – and she’s bitter and vindictive and wants to crawl inside of herself and decay, saying, “What about her?”

“You know.” Yachi shuffles. “The rumours.”

“Do you care about them?”

“Not really,” he says, looking startled. “It’s not really any of our business.”

Shoyou sniffs into her palms. The air smells like coming rain. “I’m sorry, Yachi. For making your day bad. I liked the movie.”

Yachi helps her fix her makeup. They wipe most of it off with tissues, throw them in the bin. He looks at her sideways a few times, and doesn’t try to kiss her again.

Shoyou’s mother twitters all over her as they eat dinner, until she goes to bed. Shoyou sits up and looks at herself in the mirror, and looks at her face, drawn and scared, pats at her growing hips, slim but a little curvy. This was it forever it was happening starting and she sits in the shower and chops at her growing hair until it sits back at her shoulders in choppy red curls and she feels a little like Hinata Shoyou again.

..

“How?” Shoyou gasps. She doesn’t wear makeup to school anymore. She ties her hair up in an elastic, like she had in middle school.

Rin-chan giggles and giggles, like she’s discovered the secret to the universe. “There’s a little nub. And you just. Touch it. Like, moving your fingers back and forth over it. Or circles.”

“Maybe you have discovered the secret to the universe!”

Rin-chan looks at her oddly, but dismisses the statement as one of Shoyou’s little quirks.

..

Shoyou thinks of Yachi. It feels good, but not that good – not the all-consuming flood of good Rin-chan had described, saying she’d thought of her second year boyfriend.

Shoyou drifts off to sleep, and wakes up in the middle of the night to find herself with her hand slipped inside her pants and thinking she’s still in a dream, can’t ever feel guilty for dreaming, thinks of Yuu-chan, and then of Kageyama, and she cries out so loud.

..

It’s raining, when she next visits the volleyball club. She stands under the narrow awning above one of the windows, pressing her body up close to the brick, and peers over the top just in time to see Asahi slam one into the court. Yuu-chan and almost everyone else clap with awed approval, and Asahi looks incredibly sheepish as Yuu-chan nearly skips over to her, hi-fiving her and running her fingers gently over the taller curve of Asahi’s shoulder.

Oh. Shoyou feels a little crushed, but not much. That’s how it was. No one else in there seemed to be paying them much mind.

The Vice is staring at Shoyou, straight out through the window. Her eyes soften. Like she knows everything, or at least a little of it. Their coach – the foothill employee – is staring at her too. He rolls his eyes and jerks his thumb, beckoning her inside.

And it’s like some sort of confession, opening the unlocked gymnasium doors.

Like a surrender.

As if breathing the same air as them is tantamount to a second um I think I think I lied I lied again Shoyou the liar, like all that’s being washed away as she opens the door and breathes in sweat and body heat and warmth.

They’re all staring at her like they recognise her. They all seem to.

The Vice Captain smiles at her, already moving to greet her, the stocky Captain at her heels. “Hinata Shoyou?”

Shoyou nods, jerkily. Her lips are tightly pressed and trembling like the storm battering the roof. Falls with the rain.

“Do you want to trial volleyball? Have you ever played before?”

Shoyou tries to open her mouth, but it doesn’t matter, just as it doesn’t matter how kind Sugawara is being, because she can’t speak, it’s like she’s just barfed all her words up and left them festering behind her teeth, and Nishinoya Yuu is bobbing on the balls of her small sneakers, looking curiously over Sugawara’s shoulder.

“She has.”

They turn, surprised, to Kageyama, who turns a volleyball back and forth between her hands. Shoyou thinks of grass and of leaving a volleyball in the grass and the court she’d played on when Kageyama’s middle school had thrashed her and how she’d felt. Kageyama is almost, if possible, taller, more impressive on the court than in the halls with her modestly long skirt. Here, she’s empowered, glittering, her eyes trained back on Shoyou.

“She’s played against you, Tobio-chan?”

Kageyama nods woodenly. “Yeah. She can jump. But aside from that, she’s pretty useless.”

Sugawara looks her over, appraisingly. “Well,” she says. “Do you want to try jumping for us? If you really hate it, you can leave and not have to come back.”

“I. I don’t have. Gear. Gym gear. I threw it out.”

Asahi sort of startles. Maybe she can’t fathom the idea of throwing out gym gear.

“I have some!” says Yuu-chan, and Shoyou nearly coughs up a lung as she’s hauled off to the locker room by, by… and she’s sort of cuter in person, Yuu-chan, with her roguish grin and flyaway hair and the strength in her wiry arms.

The locker room is absolutely, completely normal, just as Shoyou had remembered it, and she wonders how she could ever have thought otherwise. Yuu-chan rummages through layers of caked-up papers and old socks before finding her gym bag, tugging it out and turning to Shoyou with a smile.

“My stuff’s probably small on you, sorry. What size shoe do you take?”

“My feet are small,” says Shoyou, attempting to smile back. She takes the Karasuno shirt and a pair of gym shorts and wonders if she’ll have to change in front of Yuu-chan - she lingers for a minute in the doorway.

Past her, the court is bright with laughter and the ringing smack of volleyball on palms. She’s very little, even littler than Shoyou.

“Are you okay?”

Shoyou touches her own face, subconsciously, patting at her lips. “Don’t I look okay, or something?”

“Nah,” says Yuu-chan, shrugging. “Just. You’ve been watching us for a while, right?”

“Yes! You’re a great libero, you’re all really good, the way you capture lost shots like _Gwahh!!_ ”

“I know, right?! Libero’s the best position, I think, ‘cause you’re always assisting your team, and they can’t really do without you. What position did you play, Sho-chan?”

Sho-chan. Shoyou feels her face warm under her fingers. “Middle blocker,” she mumbles, grinning a little.

“Ah, really? But you’re so small! I guess that doesn’t matter much, though, if you can jump.”

“I can jump! I can jump really high!”

..

She jumps. She jumps high. But she can’t quite jump as high as she could before the summer, before she stopped training, before she gave up on volleyball the first time.

Still, almost all of them – the Vice Captain, Sugawara, the Captain, Daichi, Yuu-chan and even Asahi – gasp and clap, like she’s done something incredible. Tsukishima and Yamaguchi are eyeing her from across the court, whispering to each other behind palms.

“Can you spike, Hinata-chan?” asks Sugawara, kindly.

Hinata nods rapidly, and then looks down at her borrowed shoes and shakes her head. “I don’t know. I haven’t spiked in ages.”

“Let me set to you, then. You can get back in practice.”

“Keep tossing!” Daichi calls out, and the alto of her voice blasts the hall. She throws her own across to Suga, and the way she catches it with an answering nod speaks of practice, practice, friendship and years of synchronised movement, of knowing each other as well as you know your own soul.

Suga’s tosses are soft and well-timed, good, but not spectacular, and Hinata brings her palm down only for it to miss the ball completely and she’s drowning in mortification as Yuu-chan pats her on the back and tells her to try again, and she does, and she spikes the next one a little better, hits it hard into the court.

“Come on, Ojou-sama,” leers Tsukishima, “Won’t you toss to Hinata-chan?”

Yamaguchi laughs.

Sugawara shakes her head slowly, turning to look at Kageyama. “Do you know Hinata-chan?”

“Not really.”

“Go on, Ojou-sama. See if Hinata-chan can spike your demon tosses.”

“Hinata doesn’t know what she’s doing,” says Kageyama, “but you talk as if you can spike my sets, _Tsukki_.”

 Tsukishima tosses her thick blonde braid over her shoulder – that expression on her face is awful,

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the chapter endpoint was deliberate


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for being late!
> 
> there's always that one bitch and that bitch is Aya-chan, surprise  
> (just had the ironic moment of realisation that Aya is my username?? This was unintentional?? just go with it)
> 
> Edit:-  
> 100 kudos. On a femslash. Woww <3 You're all beautiful, and thanks for appreciating my work.

..

with bone-deep disdain, and she and Kageyama glare at each other, strikingly similar in their massive presence, the unrestrained anger in their fists and Kageyama snatches the volleyball from Suga’s gentle toss, holds it as if it’s a bomb.

“Go on,” says Daichi, looking warily back and forth between her first years. “Don’t worry if you can’t spike the toss. Maybe Kageyama can tone down the first set for you, Shoyou, so you can get a feel for her playing style.”

Kageyama’s eyes flash. “I’ll toss normally, or not at all.”

“Alright, alright,” murmured Daichi, smiling wryly at Shoyou, because what is wrong with them all, Tsukishima and Kageyama and even Shoyou herself, lurking at windows and blushing, and Asahi fidgets and worries her fingernails beside Daichi, worries whether the deadened strain leeching into the room with Shoyou was her fault, as everything else was always her fault.

Nishinoya nudges her arm. She feels bony and a certain feeling settles itself inside Asahi, something of the past, something unscary and normal. She feels normal, whenever Nishinoya Yuu is beside her, nudging her, it’s okay, it’s okay.

..

Asahi had almost ruined them once. She’d broken a vase in a fight with Nishinoya, and they’d been screaming at each other outside her classroom – that was an accident, the fight, a mistake, when Asahi had attempted to quit.

It was more than quitting, Yuu had said, more than giving up, for the sheer enormity of what was being given.

Yuu had already given enough of herself. She cried once, only once, to Asahi over the phone when she’d told her parents, and it that hadn’t been foolish, nothing was. But there were no take-backs. There was nothing left to shatter Yuu further than what she’d already said, the things she’d already felt, and there was a big cold mark on both her shoulders where her father had shaken her, she’d already dated boys so what was the point, the purpose of Asahi?

Asahi thinks so, too.

“It’ll be okay,” she said, useless, uselessly, as hopeless as she’d felt. It wasn’t okay. Why is it that when people are sad, we tell them they’ll be okay, that it’ll all be fine, it’ll all get better soon somehow someday, that the future is what you make of it, and all the future is, is down to chance, is down to the hopeless luck of your birthright, of how hopeless God creates you, how the world makes you.

Yuu didn’t ask to be shaken. But Asahi shakes her and shakes her hard, feels like taking her by the cheeks and pressing their foreheads together harder, telling her why would you ever chance me?

Most days she feels crushed and a bit desolate. She sees everything clearly. She sees how clogged her throat is and how dark her eyes are and how her lips move when she lets them fall slack.

..

“Go on, ducky,” says Tsukishima, sounding typically bored. “Jump. Spike for ojou-sama.”

Shoyou’s face burns, her eyes burn. She missed.

“It’s okay, Hinata-chan,” says Sugawara.

She shakes her head and feels horribly tiny, like a ghost. She feels the ball between her palms but that’s all it is, a ball, self-supported and levitating; her hands are barely even mist, less paralysed and more entirely gone. They look at her like she’d looked at them, part amazed and the rest terrified, out of her mind – though it was less terrified and more scrutinising, coldly aware of the blank tight space levitating a ball in the middle of a stupid high school gymnasium.

..

It was more of a passing fascination, how Kageyama moved, lifting her strong and steady arms to set the ball with practiced fluidity. Kageyama watched Shoyou darkly, haughty, as though she knew ahead of time Shoyou could not possibly match her, not then and certainly not now when Shoyou’s lips moved glossy under the light and her head sat empty, her reflexes dulled to the bluntest point.

But Shoyou’s awful empty head thinks there’s something appealing in Kageyama – and wasn’t it her who had set this off, in her old blue jersey with her shiny hair yanked immaculately back to play, the look she’d given Shoyou, of fading interest.

Shoyou’s awful empty head thinks if she spikes Kageyama’s sets, something else would come of it, something besides the smack of a ball against a court, a resounding silence, a vibrating net, her heart pounding like always.

..

“ _Go on._ ”

..

Tsukishima had been there.

“Who do you like, Sho-chan? Which one of these boys do you like?”

It wasn’t exactly that, the wording, but it might as well have been.

“Um. Either of them, I guess. I think they both look good!”

“Look _good_ ,” drawls Aya-from-class-2C.

Shoyou feels the world drop. Again. Again, again, over and over, stopping and starting her heart.

“They’re hot,” says Shoyou, tonelessly. “I agree with both of you, and you’d be lucky to get either of them.”

Rin cackles loudly, slamming both hands down on her desk. It’s cracked and worn with age and use, with a whole lot of writing carved into the underside. Shoyou can barely make out half a heart, the kanji of some boy’s name, some girl’s. Aya is rolling her eyes, but Rin seems to think of is fondly as just a part of Shoyou’s personality, this carelessness, her dismissal of boys – and besides, Shoyou thought helplessly, she’d dated Yachi, hadn’t she?

“You really are a little ducky, aren’t you? Look at your hair.” Aya touches Shoyou’s bright orange tail, roughly combs her fingers through it.

“Aha, your hair’s so fluffy! It really is like a duck! Really, though, Sho-chan, who would you date?”

From the corner of the classroom, Tsukishima snickers. Yamaguchi stifles a laugh.

“Neither,” Shoyou replies. She sounds decently normal. She’s getting better at this. “I don’t like guys like that.”

“Yeah,” sighs someone else, sadly, some other girl who hadn’t really mattered at the time. “Sho-chan likes nice guys like Yachi, right?”

“Ducky doesn’t know what she likes yet,” says Aya, scornful and mocking, eyes sharp and somehow sad.

Shoyou laughs it off. She supposes she does look like a duck, her hair all messed up and spiky with how she’d cut it herself, like orange straw all clumped up in the bin.She laughs and laughs until her teeth bleed with it but it's something she can control, this.

..

Shoyou spends the rest of the practice with Daichi, working on her spike. It’s a familiar routine, the jump and thwack of the ball against her palms, the contraction of the joints in her legs and arms as she rises, and by the end of the afternoon she can do a passable imitation of a proper spike, smack Suga’s setting into the court.

She improves quickly – she’s glad, she needs to – as if the game shapes itself around her – she’s being watched by everyone, she can’t fail now, - as if the greatest hurdle was walking through the door in the first place. Round and round, smacking the ball into the court, round and round, sweat pushing paths through her skin, her muscles, until, bones aching – “Want me to toss to you?” – Shoyou can’t remember why she’d ever refused.

..

…but she almost caves in and goes home when Tanaka and Yuu-chan drag the team out for meat buns down at the combini. They’re chattering and laughing like normal human beings, and Shoyou tries to slink away around the back of the gym – and would have made it, too, if Suga hadn’t noticed.

It seemed that Suga noticed everything. Daichi saw positions, Suga saw people, and her voice is as gentle as her sets as she says, “It’s okay, Hinata-chan. Come with us!”

Shoyou dawdles by the trashcans, shuffles her feet.

Suga’s face softens. “You’re good,” she says, “and you’ll only get better! It’s just a shame you didn’t join the team sooner.”

“Mm.”

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

“What? Nothing’s wrong. Your setting wore me out, though, I haven’t jumped so high in a while!”

Suga sighed, soft enough to count as a heavy breath. Shoyou couldn’t imagine Sugawara being sad over much. She had this steady way about her, something loyal and persistent. The rest of the team was going ahead, Asahi and Daichi talking, heads bent together, while Yuu-chan raced ahead, Kageyama alone and a bit off to the side, staring into empty space.

“I think,” says Suga, carefully, “You might be able to spike for her, with a bit more practice.” Shoyou must have made a grotesque face, since Suga laughs and continues, “I know she’s not the easiest person to work with. You’d be good for each other.”

“I wouldn’t be good for her,” says Shoyou, automatically.

“Kageyama-chan… is straightforward. She would make a good friend, if you let her.”

If you’d stop obsessing over being normal, Suga meant. If volleyball was truly more important to you than being popular. But that didn’t mean much from someone like Suga, friends with Asahi or otherwise, because to Shoyou, family was the most important. Also, having friends who liked her and didn’t think she was weird or staring at them in locker rooms.

(Or, having friends who didn’t look at you as if you were the polish beneath their trainers, who respected you for being good at a sport you more than probably loved more than they did!

(But Kageyama didn’t know that, yet.)

“Come on, I’m sure Daichi’s saved you a meat bun! She was surprised to see you watching at the windows week after week.”

Shoyou laughs awkwardly (realer than before), and says, “Really? You knew I was there the whole time?”

“Don’t worry. Really-” and Suga puts a coy hand over her mouth, “I think we’re all a bit fond of you. You’re already an honorary team member!”

“Really!?”

“Really. You’re going to keep coming to practices, right? Not just watching?”

“Yeah! I’ll coming to every practice from now on and I’ll spike all of that idiot Kageyama’s sets!”

“Great! You can start of slowly, spiking mine.” Suga smiles at her, and it’s such a nice, gentle smile Shoyou’s throat closes up and she starts coughing.

..

Asahi knows Shoyou feels uncomfortable around her. She’d passed Shoyou’s meat bun across to her as they lounged around eating in the park, and Shoyou had stammered out a thank you, looking quickly from her to Yuu and down at her meat bun. And it wasn’t that Asahi had never experienced the strained conversation and covert looks before now, but Shoyou wasn’t standoffish or rude.

(In fact, Asahi guesses Shoyou is gay.)

The way Shoyou looked at Yuu: that was a bit off-putting. Asahi wanted to tell her to stop it, but that wouldn’t be the most appropriate or tactful thing to say at a casual gathering, so she said nothing, spoke with Daichi about Kageyama’s impossible sets, and tried to ignore the way Shoyou looked as alone as Asahi had felt, two years before.

At some point, Yuu loops her fingers through Asahi’s. Her hand is small and a bit sweaty, probably with traces of meat filling sticking to it. Asahi grips it tight. Shoyou looks up and back away.

(She couldn’t be too far off the mark.)

..

“Um. Kageyama?”

Kageyama barely looks at her. She’s eating lunch at her desk by the window. Everyone else has already gone outside, even Shoyou’s friends, who’d looked at Shoyou strangely when she’d said something about sports practice and catching up with them later. Shoyou can’t remember exactly what she’d said, because her head had been swimming with nerves ever since she made up her mind to actually speak to Kageyama Tobio. Outside of the gymnasium, even.

“Oh,” says Kageyama, “It’s just you.”

“What do you mean, just you!?”

She clicks her tongue at Shoyou, setting her juice box down with more force than necessary. “Just you, the terrible player who’s been lurking weirdly in the gym window. What do you want?”

“Who’s terrible!? If anything, you’re the one who’s terrible, with that attitude!”

“If you came over here thinking I’ll set to you, forget it. I don’t set to quitters.”

“Quitters?” asked Shoyou, furrowing her brow. “What do you mean?”

Kageyama rolls her expressive eyes, lips curling. She isn’t wearing makeup. Her eyebrows are dark, jaw and cheekbones angular, prominent. Her lips – pursed, teeth clenched back – are shiny with juice. “You know what I mean. Don’t you have friends to go play with, or did they all give up on you now you’re on the team?”

“No, and I really don’t understand what you mean.”

“You quit,” says Kageyama. “I don’t have time for people who quit after middle school, or idiots like you who come wandering back halfway through the term expecting pats on the back from sempai, expecting me to tone down my tosses for your own lazy, half-assed playing skill.”

The air is heavy, still, biting at Shoyou’s breath and pressing, heavier still on Shoyou’s shoulders, pressing. Her head is a mess of words, and all she knows is she’s angry, fast losing patience, her frustration at last overtaking any residual sadness. How dare she, how dare she, how dare she say that, hit upon something so deep like stumbling on a minefield, things keeping Shoyou up at night and causing her grief and making her cry, how dare Kageyama?

Kageyama turns away, and Shoyou loses her patience entirely.

“No wonder you’re always alone! I used to feel sorry for you, but now I see you’re just a giant idiot who thinks she’s queen of the court because no one on earth can spike your tosses!”

“Don’t call me that!”

“Ojou-sama? Queen of the court? Don’t act like one if you don’t want to be called it!”

“I wouldn’t act like this if you weren’t so annoying.”

“Don’t look down on me just because I… I stopped playing for a while. That doesn’t mean I quit or that I ever stopped liking volleyball.” Shoyou flushes, the truth of the words leaking out into them, and Kageyama’s finally closed her fat mouth and letting Shoyou speak. “Other things came up, and I… I ran away from volleyball, but I still wanted to play! Every day I gave it up, I wanted to play, and at least I came back in the end. _That’s_ loving a sport. Just because you think you’re better than everyone else, you’ve never had to stop playing. I mean, you look like you love volleyball when you play, and I really admire your skill, the way you set the ball so insanely well and how you look so focused, but isn’t volleyball about playing in a team? And you look like you’d rather everyone not exist, back in middle school – So, - so don’t preach at me about how much I don’t like volleyball when you can barely stand your own teammates!”

She looks taken-aback, and Shoyou is buzzing with a sense of pride and fear at the flush running across Kageyama’s high cheekbones.

“You won’t be able to spike my sets,” she says eventually, “but okay. You’re… you’re good, Hinata, but you’ll have to get better.”

“Really? I mean, I know I can get better, and I will! Set to me!”

“After practice today,” says Kageyama.

“Okay!”

“You can go now.”

Shoyou’s chair inches across the floor. It makes a long scraping sound and Kageyama stiffens – but Kageyama’s looking at her with a bit more respect now, which isn’t saying very much, but it’s a definite start.

“Can I sit with you?”

“No! Go sit with your own friends.”

“But you’re-” and Shoyou gestures helplessly at her, at her desk and around the empty classroom, “You’re alone, aren’t you?”

“Does it matter?”

“I’m sitting with you, then,” says Shoyou decisively, liking this new Kageyama more and more.

“No. Go away.”

“Can I have some of your juice?”

“No!”

..

The air is cold, colder every day, winter pulling slowly over and in. It's dark by the time Kageyama grabs a ball from the storage room and smuggles it outside as the others lock up. Sugawara waves at them as she leaves, nodding approvingly at Shoyou. She smiles at Kageyama too, but Kageyama just shuffles uncomfortably, turning the ball over and over like a lifeline.

“I can’t believe you really agreed to practice with me,” says Shoyou, as the rest of the team leaves. She sees Tsukishima turn back and sneer a little but it doesn’t bother her – Tsukishima was always like that.

And besides, Kageyama’s here with her pretty stone face saying, “Yeah. I can’t believe it either.”

“Hey!”

“You said it. Here, catch.” And Kageyama sends the ball in a flaring arc above the rooves, watching after it and knowing it’s an impossible shot not ever intended to be spiked, but she looks at Hinata watching as it spins and leaping as it falls to catch it, and Kageyama has underestimated how very high Hinata can jump and how fast she can run.

Shoyou catches it with the barest of fingertips –

But she catches it, and that’s all that matters.

..

“You’re hopeless.”

“I’m not hopeless, I’m trying!”

“I couldn’t even tell,” Kageyama retorts. “You’ll have to improve if you want to spike mine.”

“So I can spike for you?”

“I didn’t say that!” But Kageyama looks flustered, and she’s smiling at Shoyou – as much as she’s capable of smiling, which is more a relaxation of the teeth and eyes and lips – and Shoyou’s a silly girl who knows she’ll probably dream about that expression, of how nice Kageyama looks when caught off-guard.

..

Shoyou does.

..

“Asahi? For fucks sake, look at me, will you? I can’t do anything to help if you don’t look at me!”

Asahi doesn’t look at her. She can’t look at her. She’s holding the shattered remains of a bathroom mirror – she’d punched it and all the glass had splintered out, soft as cake, glass digging into her hands – but it’s better than seeing her face. She can’t look at Nishinoya. She can barely look at herself.

“Asahi, Asahi,” and Nishinoya’s there with a cloth cupping her larger hands, forcing them to open and unveil all the cracked glass, and Asahi holds them, holds the glass like water in her cupped hands. Nishinoya’s fingers are all Asahi can see of her, and they’re so small, so strong.

“Asahi, it’s okay. You can let them go.”

“I can’t,” Asahi chokes, clenching her fingers tighter. “Not until you tell your parents you were- you were lying, or something.” But she knows it’s too late, both of them know it.

“We’re in this together, Asahi. Look at me. I don’t care if you don’t feel it yet but I really love you, I love you so much, so stop acting like an idiot and give me the glass!”

“You can’t love me,” Asahi whispers. “Why are you here? You don’t have to be with me.” You, you could have anyone. You’re so pretty and little and vibrant and all Asahi is, is weak and chewed-up and helpless and overlarge and she’s too tall and her hips and breasts are huge and her thighs are masculine and fat and she cries at almost everything, Asahi.

“I want to be here,” says Nishinoya, firmly. “D’you think I’d tell my parents for just anyone? This is for good, or for as long as you want it, I don’t care, but I’m not leaving until you put the glass down and tell me you don’t want me here anymore.”

“I… I don’t want…”

“Say it, Asahi. Look at me.”

Weak, boneless, Asahi looks up at tiny Nishinoya, larger than life above her.

“Come back,” she says, bright and trembling, and they’re both on the verge of tears. “Come back to the team and stop avoiding me. Whether we win or not, it’s all of our responsibilities, not just yours. And I get to choose who to tell about me. Not everything has to be your fault.”

“But it is my fault! If we weren’t together, you’d be happier.”

“I wouldn’t.”

There’s such trust and affection in her voice, Asahi almost begins to believe her.

“Yuu-”

“Stop being an idiot and put the glass down.”

(When Asahi sees Hinata now, this is what she sees: herself, a mirror partially cracked, with no Yuu-chan.)

But Asahi relaxes her hands and lets it fall, and Nishinoya’s fussing over her with that stupid cloth, and she certainly doesn’t feel any better than she had an hour ago, but there’s something amazing in Nishinoya’s lips in her hair, and maybe in another hour, maybe.

..

“I’d say you could all come to the party but Shoyou can’t handle her alcohol. Hey, Shoyou, are you even listening? I don’t think she is.” In whispers, “Maybe don’t bring her along this time.”

“Oh, shut up,” says Shoyou, automatic, unthinking.

..

She rides on adrenaline and tells Yachi. She tells him because volleyball makes her so happy and it’s taken months for her to realise how much of herself she’d uselessly hacked away. She tells him because he’s her best friend, still supposed to be her boyfriend even though he’s perceptive enough to know they aren’t really dating in the normal way at all, because he’s gentle and unconditionally supportive, and even then the words stick in her throat and she can’t bring herself to look at him as they sit on the steps behind the school footbridge, the sky blue and earth still turning.

“I like girls, Yachi. I mean, I really like you, but… you know.”

“Oh,” says Yachi, “oh.”

Oh.

And then she realises she’s made a mistake. Running on adrenaline, another mistake, feeling good, all going so well, friends with someone like Kageyama Tobio.

Once, it’s a joke, I’m not, I. I’m not - 

There are no take-backs to his expression, no re-inhalation of words, no confusion to the way his face seems to fall, light up as he processes two weeks ago at the foothill store, Asahi, and then the way his face falls again.

“I’m sorry,” says Shoyou, and begins to cry.

“No, no, it’s okay. Of course it’s okay. It’s just… Don’t worry, really. Please don’t cry. It’s okay.”

Shoyou cries harder, cries so hard her tears drip and make little rain spots on the concrete. She feels Yachi move at her side, awkwardly try to pat her shoulder. “Sorry,” she mumbles, “Sorry, I’m sorry.” As if that’s all she can say. What if you were straight, her mind whispers at her. You could be straight. But the thought brings her no comfort. Now she’s said the words, now she’s confessed, it’s over, all over, like a door slammed shut on her hands. What if? It is, this is, and Shoyou isn’t even relieved by it.

“Don’t be sorry! I won’t tell anyone. I,” and Yachi struggles to speak, struggles past his own smaller lump, “I like you, Hinata-chan. I won’t stop liking you because you’re… because of this.”

Don’t cry, don’t cry, and she cries and buries her head in her arms and knees, bruised blue from missing Kageyama’s sets.

“I won’t tell anyone,” Yachi repeats. “It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone unless you want me to.”

“No! You can’t tell anyone, Yachi, please don’t.”

“Okay.” Yachi squeezes her shoulder, pressure just light enough to be uncertain.

Yachi is all she has. Yachi is her only friend. Why is everything so terrible? Why is Shoyou so sad all the time? Why is she so useless? She is Shoyou and not the same Shoyou as before. Before it all started. Before she froze.

She wants to be twelve again. Twelve, running a ball around a net.

..

“Oh, shut up,” says Shoyou, and Aya-chan blanches.

People whisper more, and Shoyou doesn’t care, couldn’t care less about anything anymore, and if Sugawara or someone were here too she’d probably congratulate her, and Kageyama is smiling, relaxing her face, more broadly than Shoyou’s ever seen. Shoyou feels the hairs on her arms thrill and her heart pick up speed, and she’s scared and shaky and feverish.

Kageyama sees her staring. Kageyama stares back, fading light. Then she trips over nothing and has to catch herself on her desk, and Aya’s snorting and turning away to laugh but who gives a shit about her, because Kageyama’s flushing bright red and Shoyou’s giggling, and even though she’s about to do the most stupid thing of her life and tell Yachi, for now, everything is fine.

They’re sort-of friends.

Shoyou and Tobio.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bit of porn below. Spring training camp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahah.

Yachi barely meets Shoyou’s eyes as he mutters a soft thank you and toes his shoes off in the entryway. Shoyou’s mother wants to meet him and Shoyou never had the courage to refuse and when Shoyou had asked, all desperate and pleading, Yachi hadn’t the heart to say no even though he and Shoyou looked at each other and saw very plainly how terrible an idea it was and what it might lead to. The fading winter was dead and flat, one of its last days, and their eyes reflected stormwater as they’d bolted down the lane to her house, the rain pelting them, wind saturating their clothes and lungs and chilling them.

“Shoyou? Shoyou, are you home?”

She clenched and unclenched her fists, removing her sodden jacket and hanging it up on a peg to dry. It hang next to her father’s, her mother’s coat, Yachi’s blazer.

“Pardon the intrusion,” Yachi replied, in a tremulous voice.

The kitchen was warm and bright. Shoyou shook.

“Oh,” said her mother, “hello! Shoyou’s told me all about you.” Her tone was decorous, kind and polite and warm, and her eyes feasted upon Yachi as though he were the last piece of bread in a famine storehouse, flickering every so often to Shoyou. The raw hope in them made Shoyou sick to the stomach: so terribly guilty, and lonely.

Yachi’s spine snapped into frantic little bows, his nervous smile, gentle face and eyes, the sharp masculine cut of his jaw endearing him instantly to Shoyou’s mother. She assured him it was a pleasure to have him over for dinner and why doesn’t he sit down and tell her about himself, where he lived, what subjects he took, what he planned on studying and where, and did he play sports?

“No, no!” said Yachi. “I’m not very good at sports, I’m only in the literature club.”

“Don’t say only,” said Shoyou, frowning and flicking at his ears, “You’re a great writer!”

“Writing is a talent! I’m sure Shoyou’s sports-mad enough for the both of you.” And Shoyou’s mother pauses in the act of laying cutlery to ruffle Shoyou’s hair. I’m proud of you, she would have said, if they were alone, very proud. Instead, she said, “How’s volleyball practice going? Any word of playing in matches?”

“It’s great,” said Shoyou with enthusiasm, “and maybe I’ll get to play in a match soon.” It was her favourite part of the day, every day, where she could forget everything and funnel all else into the force of a palm and cleanse herself with each hit to the ground she took. Suga looked at her often, spoke to her personally sometimes after practice, and it was as if she knew when Shoyou threw herself too hard or overcompensated with her jumps and knew exactly where all the excess energy was coming from. Tsukishima was still rude and standoffish, Asahi still intimidating, but she and Kagayama made a good enough team given the state of things.

“She’s great, I’ve seen her play,” Yachi praises, and Shoyou flushes and feels terribly pleased that Yachi would vouch for her even after.

Shoyou’s mother sets a tureen of stew on the table and smiles at both of them. “Well,” she says, “I’m glad to see you getting on so well. Please come over whenever you’d like, Yachi – the house is always open to you.”

“Oh,” stutters Yachi, “Thank you!”

“No, not at all.” Shoyou’s mother sounds almost amused; she is incredibly endeared, and in any other circumstance, Shoyou would be overjoyed to have her approval on someone as important as Yachi. As it is –

“Shoyou, when you go upstairs, knock on the door to the master bedroom and tell your father to come down for supper?”

“Sure,” says Shoyou. She takes Yachi’s bowl and her own to the sink for washing up and she vaguely hears Yachi leave the room, having asked about a bathroom. He wouldn’t be angry, Shoyou knows, that they – okay, _she_ , single-handedly – had perhaps mislead her mother into believing they may or may not be dating. He wouldn’t be angry, but knowing Yachi, that was worse – he would never shout or be furious, but he would fret and worry over the lie. Yachi had never told a great, lurking lie in his life, a lie so all-consuming as Shoyou’s as to require constant monitoring, which seeped into every frame and corner of his life and sleep. Funny, such lies required practice, grew easier with time: once integrated, became habit, a truly terrible habit.

“Shoyou,” her mother gushed, “he’s a lovely boy, and you should have brought him home sooner.”

“It’s not like that! Really! We’re better just as friends.”

Her mother frowns, looks ten times older than she is. Her skin is fading, gradually thinning with age. It’s subtle. Slow. Shoyou’s heart aches for time. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if Shoyou hated her? If she were a terrible mother, who’d shown her nothing but disdain and given her nothing but sadness.

But as trite as it sounded, her mother wanted only the best for her, had tried her best, had hugged and kissed her and held Shoyou while she cried. As it was, her mother loved her.

“Yachi likes another girl,” says Shoyou, firmly. At her mother’s laugh, Shoyou hastened to say, “It’s an upperclassman in the literature club, she’s really pretty, and I think she’s training Yachi to take over as president once she graduates.” She based as much of this as possible on truth – Shimizu Kiyoko had sweeping black hair, beautiful eyes, rounded glasses, a modest posture and mature way of speaking, and Shoyou had seen Yachi turn mildly starry-eyed while talking about her.

“Ah,” said her mother. Her eyes were dangerously bright. “Yachi must have very good taste.”

Shoyou’s insides were cursing up a storm. “And I’m not interested in Yachi! I like someone else from my class!”

Why had she said from my class, what a terrible, thoughtless diversion her mother was sure to figure out was false, Karasuno was rather small, and she could easily probe Yachi if she wanted to. Shoyou could imagine Yachi’s response, a meek, “No, Shoyou hasn’t told me anything about who she likes.” His phrasing would be slightly feminine, but his mother would overlook it in favour of trusting him.

Shoyou’s mother looked at her curiously. “You haven’t told me about that. Is it anyone I’ve heard of?”

Shoyou doesn’t see how that could be possible, seeing as she’d never spoken to her mother at length about any boys but Yachi.

“No,” said Shoyou, fumbling the dishes and laughing in a high, nervous quaver, “It’s definitely no one you’ve heard of.”

Yachi returned then and Shoyou seized his arm and nearly dragged him from the room, shouting “thank you for dinner!” over their shoulders. She passed her father on the stairs. His hair was wet black from the shower. He carried little Natsu, who looked exhausted, on his back – she waved tiredly at Shoyou, and Shoyou clasped her sister’s tiny hand and hugged it to her face. Shoyou’s father ruffled her hair and said a soft hello to Yachi. They were as shy as each other. For a moment, Shoyou regretted that she couldn’t really like Yachi, not in the way Yachi likes her, because he was kinder than anyone she’d ever met.

.

“You like someone in our class?”

“Huh? What?”

Yachi sits at the end of Shoyou’s bed, looking pensive. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I heard you talking in the kitchen. Is that what has you so worried?”

“Um. What do you mean?” Her hands hang heavy at her sides, her tongue thick in her mouth.

“Are you worried they’ll think differently of you, if they find you like them?”

“No,” says Shoyou, “There’s no one I really like! I was just saying that so she didn’t think we were going out!”

Yachi faces her. For once his shoulders are firm, unwavering. “I don’t think you should lie unnecessarily. About… that… I understand. But there’s no point fabricating extra stories.”

“Oh.”

“Shoyou, I’m just trying to help.”

“You really can’t understand. There’s no way you could possibly understand. You, you’ve seen how scared I am, I cried in front of you like two times and I didn’t want to, but I’m so, so scared of her finding out and anything I can say to make it better, I will!”

“You’re not making it better,” Yachi urges. They both flinch as his voice cracks like a stone dropped from height, all splintery and then a leaden dull echo in the air left behind it. “If you can’t produce a name, she won’t believe you. And if you ever wanted to try again telling her, isn’t it better to ease the way than barricade it?”

Yachi had such a way with words, Shoyou thought admiringly. It was a conundrum she couldn’t possibly solve. If she wanted to be with anyone, and inexplicably, Kageyama came to mind, all blue-black with warm calloused hands, if she wanted to love a woman, she would forsake her family. The thought caused her unbearable pain. Yet if, in ten years, she would hug her mother and hold Natsu’s hand and sit down to family dinners, she would sit beside a man. Shoyou imagined the matching rings on her parents’ fingers on her own hand, the hand of her husband, how the rings would dig into each other’s skin, vices.

She tried explaining these things to Yachi. He nodded seriously and seemed to appreciate the difficulty of it all. “I don’t know the answer,” he said slowly, “but I think it’ll become clearer when you like someone. When you fall in love.”

“Love?” It was a foreign word to speak, let alone think of.

“If there’s someone you love, you might find they’re worth even the risk of temporarily losing your family. Only temporarily, I’m sure! – your family is close, way closer than mine, and they’d feel as much pain over losing you as you would over them.”

Shoyou hugged him, and they sat on the bed and watched movies and talked about normal things like teachers and classes and books and volleyball and the faraway problems of other students before they went to sleep.

.

“Takeda-sensei has worked out a camp with Nekoma and a few other schools in the area,” said Coach Ukai. “It’ll be in Tokyo, after exams. We’ll be making the announcement after practice today.”

“Understood,” said Daichi, sharing a look with Suga. The match against Aoba Johsai two weeks prior had been a blow to team morale, blown their chances at interhigh, but the addition of Hinata to the team had changed something. There was obviously something troubling her, but she had instants of aggressive optimism where all the worry sitting in Hinata’s face melted away to something more natural – Daichi knew such relentless positivity was Hinata’s resting state, and the moments were growing more frequent, more infectious, as the days went by. She wasn’t a perfect player and couldn’t possibly be, with the amount of time she’d taken out, but her trust and her confidence meant she was highly compatible with Kageyama Tobio: an untrainable player.

They’re good for each other, Koushi had told her. Koushi was so horribly genuine – they’d been through it all together. Daichi knew how disappointed she was, even privately; with Kageyama trained and Hinata to spike her sets with their fast-developing freak quick, Suga would be shunted from the Nekoma match starting line-up.

She’d talked it over with Michimiya, who captained the boys’ team. His team was weak, and despite all of Michimiya’s enthusiasm he felt helpless to rally them. Daichi wasn’t the type to be sentimental, but if she had to spend the rest of her life with him, she would probably live and die happily.

“It’s a training camp,” said Daichi. “We should count on Hinata and Kageyama to pull through before then, so the team knows where it stands for the Spring Tournament.” So Suga knew where she stood.

“Asahi seems to be on board,” said Ukai.

“Yeah,” Koushi sighed. “She was fine to play against Aoba Johsai, and so was Yuu. It’s everyone else we need to worry about.”

Daichi put a hand on her shoulder and mustered up a smile. “Hinata’s a game-changer. We’ll do well with her.”

“In the meantime,” said Ukai, looking up as Takeda-sensei came in, “you’ll need to work on those receives. They were reluctant to allow us in, since we’re untested, but Nekomata-sensei vouched for us. There will be strong schools there. You should all be as prepared as you can be.”

Gradually, the team trickled over to the gymnasium for afternoon practice. Yuu took front and centre, perfecting receives as Asahi spiked ball after ball cross-court for her. Koushi sat out for a while, watching Daichi, feeling something wistful as the season warmed and contemplated this last spring before the end, and she shook her head to clear it and cheered herself up by watching the first years. They were very young and green; Tsukishima was almost certainly growing taller.

“Hinata! You’re hopeless, hold your arms out more!”

“I’m trying, _bakageyama_ ” she huffed, rubbing at her head. It sported a large red mark where Kageyama’s spike had hit it.

“You can’t possibly be trying, idiot!”

“Well I am!”

They glared at each other. Koushi thought of what Ukai had said to her, that girl has something large on her mind and it’ll affect her gameplay until she shakes it off, the afternoon Hinata had entered the gym the first time and stood there trembling as the team sized her up.

Kageyama said something else, from the sounds of it something crude directed towards Tsukishima, and she and Hinata laughed as Tsukishima barked them down. Yamaguchi, practicing with the second years, wasn’t a natural but she was improving. All in all, they were a good lot.

She felt eyes on her from time to time as she practiced with Daichi. Kageyama, looking at her for approval. It felt nice – Koushi was proud of her.

“Yuu-chan, Yuu-sempai, teach us!”

Yuu puffed out her chest, tossing a ball with one hand. “It’s easy, like this! Kageyama, Hinata, go for it!”

And Hinata leapt, shutting her eyes, trusting unshakeably as Kageyama set the ball right into her grasp, and as she fell back they saw Nishinoya execute a perfect receive, volleying the ball back over the net.

“Oh!”

“Bend your knees more, Sho-chan!”

“Oh! Like this?”

“That’s it, now try receiving!”

“Kageyama! Kageyama, did you see that?

“I was looking right at you, idiot!”

“Alright,” says Coach Ukai, from the sidelines, “I want you two,” he points at Hinata and then Kageyama, “working on the usual, from now until the Nekoma match. You could be one of our strongest assets. Nishinoya, receiving.”

Set, spike. Set, eyes squinted tight, spike, thwack, ball received and spiked by Yamaguchi back across the net. Set, spike, oh, Nishinoya, tuck your knees in more when you dive. Set, spike, “Nice block, Tsukki!”

Hesitant, Takeda grins.

Ukai purses his lips, knows Takeda has him – as Hinata had him as she’d nearly burst out crying in the middle of Foothill and watched at the windows for weeks on end and turned out to be a repository of raw, blinding talent – he can’t abandon a team with promise.

.

“Hey, Kageyama?”

“What.”

“Do you ever think about what happens to us when we graduate?”

“That’s three years away. But yes. Sometimes.”

They sit on the steps of the gym, where they’ve taken to sitting during breaks. It’s a place no one checks to find Hinata, and no one ever looks for Kageyama. They aren’t sitting particularly close, but Hinata is acutely aware of her every movement. Their breath falls warm in the air.

“I’m going to be the best player in Japan,” Hinata proclaims, and she’s never felt more certain of her goal. If she focuses on volleyball she sees the future bright and optimistic and feels so incredibly hopeful.

“Hmph.”

“What? I will be!”

“You can’t be,” Kageyama accuses. “Two people can’t be the best at volleyball, and I’ll be the best player.”

Hinata mulls this over for a little while. “We’re better together than we are apart. We can definitely both be the best.”

She doesn’t respond, and Hinata looks up into the glare of the sun and Kageyama’s face to see a bright flush spreading across the high lines of her cheeks. Her ears were blushing too.

“You have pretty ears,” says Hinata.

“Hah? What sort of a thing to say is that?”

“A compliment!” Hinata retorts, flaming.

“Why were you even looking at my ears?”

“I wasn’t! I just saw them and thought they looked nice! Anyway, we’ll become the best in Japan and you’ll have boys telling you how pretty your ears are all the time, so you should be… prepared!”

“Boys?” Kageyama looks bemused. “Why would a boy say that?”

“Idiot.”

“You’re the idiot, complementing people’s ears!”

.

There’s no way we can do this. No way. Not here. Not now, and _oh my god she’s looking right at me on her knees, hot and flushed and bright._

Her lips are moving and she’s saying something and Yuu is holding Asahi’s hand and guiding it to her cropped hair and forcing her to tug and her pink tongue is pointed and prodding _inside her_ Asahi yanks hard at her hair and Yuu moans all rough and heavy like she’s fucking thrilled to taste her.

“God,” her girlfriend says, right into her vagina, and that’s attractive in the weirdest way, “You’re too quiet – moan a little or something.”

You do enough of that for the both of us she thought and how did she expect her to moan with the entire team asleep next door but Asahi couldn’t help but let out a breathy little gasp when Yuu climbed a hand up her shirt and blew cool at her clit.

“Yuu-”

.

“Suga.”

“Daichi.”

“We can’t sleep with this.”

“With what?”

“Don’t play dumb. I know you can hear them.”

“Daichi. I’m trying to go to sleep. I’ll pretend not to hear them until I succeed, or they finish, whichever comes first.”

“You don’t ever think it’s… weird, do you?”

“Asahi and Yuu-chan?”

“Mm.”

“I don’t pretend to understand it, since I’ve never felt that way myself. But I also know they are our friends and teammates, and deserve our support.”

“Yeah, I know. Just seems like the whole world’s going that way, sometimes.”

.

Her head slammed back against the tiles.

.

“Do you really think that?”

“Yeah,” said Daichi. “If you’re into girls, that’s one thing.”

“You think Yuu-chan is straight.”

“I wasn’t thinking of Yuu-chan, she’s in a serious relationship. I don’t know. She probably could’ve been, if things were different.”

Daichi hears Koushi shifting uncomfortably in bed. “I don’t think so. To be gay, or like Yuu; it’s still not acceptable here. Perhaps in places like America, but not here.”

“Hm.”

“And Hinata?”

.

Yuu grins, “Nice!” and a montage of _nice spikes_ flies through Asahi’s brain and then out her ear; it’s the same tone of voice: _nice,_ _woah!_ , _score!_

Her knees tremble, and she wishes she could hike a leg up over Yuu’s shoulder, but the weight would probably crush her flat.

.

A loud, hitching groan sounded through the wall. Daichi scowls at the ceiling. “What about her?”

“You think she can help it? She was terrified – we all saw her face when she met Yuu-chan and Asahi.”

“I don’t think she can help it, Suga, you misunderstood. Hinata is… Hinata is probably a lesbian. But Kuroo?” Daichi let out a pissed little noise.

“Ah. You’re uncomfortable because she’s always flirting with you.”

“It’s not that. I want her to take the game seriously.”

“Maybe she does. I wondered if she might be with Kenma.”

“Kozume Kenma?”

“Daichi, are you okay? You’re not acting like yourself.”

Daichi doesn’t feel like herself. She feels sleep-deprived, out of her own body, listening to Asahi and Noya going at it in the bathroom down the hall, listening to Hinata snoring sprawled out over her bed and half onto the next one, Kageyama sleeping peacefully on her side, Tanaka grunting and scratching her stomach, the ungrateful second years clumped together against the far wall. Their team was a bit patchy, cobbled together on the faulty ground of past and conflict. Rallying a bunch of adolescent girls, sports-mad or otherwise, was an exhausting task.

“Fine,” she replies. “Go back to sleep, Suga.”

Thud.

Minutes later, Asahi and Yuu titter their way back into the room and creep back into their beds. Tanaka grumbles tunelessly, turns in her sleep.

.

The matches are fierce, and Karasuno is evidently unprepared for the skill of Tokyo’s students. Even with the arrival of Hinata and Kageyama (having failed an exam apiece, and later on almost killed thanks to Tanaka’s ‘amazingly cool’ older sister), the first couple of victories were slim.

Hinata, blindingly happy, but tired of Kageyama and admiring Kageyama at the same time – and feelings were frustrating – latches on to Kenma for the rest of the evening, sitting around on a mattress and exploding over the day’s matches.

“What I wouldn’t give for a bit of that height!” she was saying, all pumped up and spreading her arms wide, like Tsukki or Yuu-chan. Kenma looks up from her game to smile at her, briefly.

Yaku shrugs her lean shoulders and grins. “Maybe you’ll verse Lev tomorrow. She’s basically a mutant.”

Hinata remembers the girl she’d seen earlier that day, the new Nekoma girl, and feels a thrill of excitement. How great would it be to beat her, to play her, such a simple pleasure, winning a match and overcoming the highest obstacles? Incredible, how even with Yuu-chan and Kageyama so close, she could basically forget everything, have it fade to the back of her mind; Kenma was cute, but not really Hinata’s type, and Hinata could really, really like her as a friend and know for certain she wasn’t crushing on her (even though Kenma’s captain, Kuroo, was really, really pretty, she was also a third year, and really, really intimidating. And Hinata is thinking about Kageyama again and she really, really needs to stop).

“I’ll beat Reevu,” she said, with confidence.

“You do realise I’m a part of Nekoma as well, right?”

Hinata slings her arm around Kenma’s shoulders and squishes their cheeks together. She can feel Kenma’s smile, even as Hinata says, “I’ll beat you too! I’ll beat all of Nekoma! But we’ve never played… Re... Leevu?”

“Lev,” Kenma corrects.

“Lev! Yeah, Lev and Nekoma!”

And Hinata’s grabbed by her ponytail and yanked, hard.

“Ohhh!”

“Hinata!!!”

Hinata turns around to see Kageyama, clutching at her stomach, glaring balefully at her.

“You! You pulled my hair!"

“You headbutted me in the stomach!”

“Kageyama!!!”

Kenma had returned to her game. A few of the students from other schools, Tokyo-region schools they hadn’t versed before, were staring at them. Most just returned to other conversations, other activities, spread across twenty futons. And Kageyama still looms over her, not bothering to sit down, glaring down at her with those dark blue eyes – Hinata’s stomach lurches, and certainly not in a good way.

“What did I do?” Hinata cries, tugging at her friend’s – _her friend’s_ – wrist. The movement is essentially subconscious, but neither of them pull away, and Hinata’s hand lingers long enough for her face to feel hot. To her further stomach-lurching delight/unease, Kageyama’s cheeks are slowly, slowly reddening, spreading hectic across her ears.

“Nothing,” Kageyama replies. She sounds even more contemptuously than usual. “Asahi-sempai and Nishinoya-sempai were in the bathroom.”

“So?” says Hinata, uncomprehending.

“So –“she shakes her head, vigorously, “Forget it! I was just looking for you.”

“Ah! Kageyama!”

“Agh! Get off me!”

Hinata had flung her arms around Kageyama’s legs and her cheeks were pressed close against Kageyama’s knees, and even this small contact felt ten thousand times better, more perfect, than her face against Kenma’s – and she was caught up in the heat and the sound of Kageyama’s protests and her own loud laughter.

.

(“I’m sorry,” says Kageyama, quietly.

And Hinata looks up at her from where she’s been standing on her doorstep, but her face is downcast, choppy orange curls falling across her face. Kageyama hesitates, and takes a half-step back, and Hinata thrusts the ball into her stomach (she aims for the chest, but she’s so small, just over five foot’).

“Toss to me.”)

“Kageyama?”

“Mngh?”

“We can beat Nekoma. Lev. We can beat everyone, with us!”

“Mngh.”

“And you trust me, right, Tobio-chan?”

“T-Tobio-chan!?”

“Tobio-chan.”

“Shut up.”

“Hey!”

“Go to sleep.”

Kageyama lay in the dark, her heart racing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tobin-chan didn't actually see Asahi and Noya-chan doing anything. She just heard the noises and assumed. They didn't get real loud until later.


End file.
